They were rarely separated from their homes when their land was sold; they and all that they had became the property of the purchaser.

The law favored this realization of the serf, in not allowing him to be sold out of the country." What inspired this law, destructive not only of slavery, but of property itself?
For, if the master cannot drive from his domain the slave whom he has once established there, it follows that the slave is proprietor, as well as the master.
"The Barbarians," again says M.Laboulaye, "were the first to recognize the slave's rights of family and property,--two rights which are incompatible with slavery." But was this recognition the necessary result of the mode of servitude in vogue among the Germanic nations previous to their conversion to Christianity, or was it the immediate effect of that spirit of justice infused with religion, by which the seignior was forced to respect in the serf a soul equal to his own, a brother in Jesus Christ, purified by the same baptism, and redeemed by the same sacrifice of the Son of God in the form of man?
For we must not close our eyes to the fact that, though the Barbarian morals and the ignorance and carelessness of the seigniors, who busied themselves mainly with wars and battles, paying little or no attention to agriculture, may have been great aids in the emancipation of the serfs, still the vital principle of this emancipation was essentially Christian.

Suppose that the Barbarians had remained Pagans in the midst of a Pagan world.

As they did not change the Gospel, so they would not have changed the polytheistic customs; slavery would have remained what it was; they would have continued to kill the slaves who were desirous of liberty, family, and property; whole nations would have been reduced to the condition of Helots; nothing would have changed upon the terrestrial stage, except the actors.

The Barbarians were less selfish, less imperious, less dissolute, and less cruel than the Romans.